One in Eight Households Lacks Landline
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
WASHINGTON — More than one in eight households have cell phones but lack traditional landline telephones, according to a federal study released yesterday that tracks the country’s growing dependence on wireless phones. The data, reported twice a year, suggested that the number of households relying solely on cell phones may be growing more slowly than it had in the past. But the researchers said the slowdown might be due to changes in their survey, including altering the order of some questions.
“We don’t know how much reflects reality and how much reflects changes in the questionnaire,” a senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and an author of the report, Stephen Blumberg, said. The report released yesterday showed that for the first half of 2007, 14% of households had cell phone service but no landline telephones. That was less than 1 percentage point over the second half of 2006 — not a statistically significant difference.
